F5 Transforms Application Security for the AI Era
- F5 is addressing the rapidly changing threat landscape and reducing complexity for its customers.
- The company is providing new capabilities to protect and power every app and API, everywhere.
- F5 is making AI pervasive across its entire solution portfolio, offering intelligent capabilities to protect against sophisticated AI-powered threats.
- The industry's most comprehensive, AI-ready API security solution is being offered by F5.
- None.
Insights
With the proliferation of digital transformation, the security of APIs has become a cornerstone of enterprise cybersecurity strategies. The introduction of F5's comprehensive, AI-ready API security solution addresses a significant market need for end-to-end protection. As digital experiences become increasingly AI-driven, the complexity of securing a vast network of APIs across various environments—on-premises, cloud and edge—escalates. F5's integration of capabilities for vulnerability detection and observability during the development process is a proactive approach to security, aiming to reduce the window of risk before APIs enter production. This shift from a reactive to a proactive security posture is crucial as it minimizes the potential attack surface, which is a growing concern given the increasing sophistication of cyber threats targeting application layers.
For businesses, this solution represents a strategic investment in risk management, potentially reducing the long-term costs associated with breaches and compliance violations. Moreover, the consolidation of disparate security tools into a single platform can streamline operations and improve the efficiency of IT and security teams, which is particularly beneficial given the current landscape where such teams are often stretched thin.
The announcement of F5's Distributed Cloud Services offering a full lifecycle API security solution is indicative of the evolving cloud computing landscape. Enterprises increasingly adopt hybrid and multicloud architectures to meet the demands of modern digital experiences. The flexibility to deploy applications and APIs across multiple locations helps organizations optimize performance and resilience, but it also introduces significant management complexity. F5's approach to offer a unified platform for API security—from discovery to runtime protection—aligns with the need for simplified cloud management tools that can handle the intricacies of a distributed environment.
By integrating AI capabilities across its portfolio, F5 is enhancing its value proposition in a market where intelligent automation and data-driven decision-making are becoming critical competitive factors. The AI Data Fabric and the forthcoming AI assistant tool promise to provide actionable insights and automated policy configurations, which can accelerate response times to security incidents and optimize application delivery. This level of automation and intelligence is expected to be a key differentiator in cloud solutions, potentially influencing customer preferences and market dynamics in F5's favor.
F5's strategic focus on AI and API security is likely to resonate with investors as it taps into two significant growth areas in the technology sector. By anticipating market trends and customer needs, F5 is positioning itself as a leader in a niche but increasingly critical domain. The financial implications for F5 could be substantial if the new capabilities translate into increased market share and customer retention. The integration of acquired technology from API security innovator Wib suggests effective deployment of capital towards enhancing the company's competitive edge.
Investors should monitor the adoption rates of F5's new offerings and the impact on the company's financial performance. A successful implementation that leads to a reduction in the frequency and severity of security breaches for their customers could also enhance F5's reputation and brand value. As businesses continue to invest heavily in digital infrastructure, F5's focus on easing the complexity of securing and managing multicloud environments may drive long-term revenue growth and improve profit margins through economies of scale and potential cross-selling opportunities with their existing solutions.
New end-to-end API security and AI capabilities make it easier for customers to protect their AI-powered applications
As AI accelerates the growth of applications and the APIs that connect them, F5 is bringing API code testing and telemetry analysis to F5 Distributed Cloud Services, creating the industry’s most comprehensive and AI-ready API security solution. F5 also announced it is making AI pervasive across its entire solution portfolio with intelligent capabilities that help customers protect against sophisticated AI-powered threats, while making it easier to secure and manage multicloud application environments.
“Companies already face daunting complexity and a rapidly changing threat landscape. The added pressure to secure and deliver AI services compounds this, putting many security and IT teams in an untenable position,” said François Locoh-Donou, President and CEO, F5. “It is our singular mission to deliver solutions that greatly reduce this complexity so our customers can focus on what matters most to them: their business. We are delivering new capabilities that ensure our customers are ready for AI, making it significantly easier for them to protect and power every app, every API, everywhere.”
In F5’s forthcoming 2024 State of Application Strategy report,
This has created immense complexity in enterprise application environments, and it only continues to grow. The same research found that the percentage of organizations hosting their applications in six different environments doubled in the past year, to
F5 Distributed Cloud Services offer the industry’s most comprehensive, AI-ready API security solution
As AI drives growth in the volume of apps and APIs, it is adding significant security challenges that companies must solve. New AI-driven digital experiences are highly distributed with a mix of data sources, models, and services spread across on-premises, cloud, and edge environments, all connected by an expanding network of APIs. The protection of these API connections and the data that runs through them is the critical security challenge that companies must face as they deploy more AI-enabled services.
To address this challenge, Distributed Cloud Services will now offer the industry’s most comprehensive, AI-ready API security solution. Today, companies are forced to use disparate tool sets and capabilities to secure their APIs at build time and during runtime. The addition of capabilities recently acquired from API security innovator Wib enables vulnerability detection and observability in application development processes, ensuring that risks are identified and policies implemented before APIs enter production. At a time when API security has never been more important and more complex, F5 is eliminating the need for customers to pay for and manage separate API security solutions by offering API discovery, testing, posture management, and runtime protection—all in a single platform.
Distributed Cloud Services offer the following benefits of a full lifecycle API security solution:
- Greatly reduced risk window for new APIs, through the identification of vulnerabilities and enforcement of strict, accurate specifications before they enter production.
- Clear governance guidance, with real-time standards and regulatory compliance reporting for security operations teams and CISOs.
- API discovery, including third-party and unmanaged APIs in application code, on public internet properties, or referenced in app telemetry.
- A single solution for both API discovery and enforcement of protocols, policies, and configurations from code to runtime.
“In today’s highly distributed and interconnected world, the protection of the connections that fuel business-critical processes is becoming one of the most important components of enterprise security,” said Chris Steffen, Vice President of Research, EMA. “As AI accelerates growth in applications and APIs, the ability to consolidate tools and have a single end-to-end API security solution will be a significant advantage for any company.”
For more information on Distributed Cloud API Security, please see this companion blog.
Making AI pervasive across the F5 portfolio
F5 technology sits in the data path of nearly half of the world’s applications, providing the unique position and expertise to deliver AI-enabled solutions that benefit from an unmatched level of data. The new F5 AI Data Fabric is a foundation for building innovative solutions that help customers make more informed decisions and take quicker actions. Telemetry from Distributed Cloud Services, BIG-IP, and NGINX will surface unparalleled insights, produce real-time reports, automate actions, and power AI agents.
Later this year, F5 will release an AI assistant that will change the way customers interact with and manage F5 solutions using a natural language interface. Powered by the F5 AI Data Fabric, the tool will serve as an intelligent partner to stretched IT and security teams. It will easily generate data visualizations, identify anomalies, query and generate policy configurations, and apply remediation steps. It will also act as an embedded customer support manager, allowing customers to ask questions and receive recommendations based on model training of entire product knowledge bases.
For more information on the F5 AI Data Fabric, please see this companion blog.
Additional Resources
- At F5, Ridiculously Easy App Security and Delivery Is Our Guiding Light – F5 Blog
- AppWorld 2024 Details
About F5
F5 is a multicloud application security and delivery company committed to bringing a better digital world to life. F5 partners with the world’s largest, most advanced organizations to secure every app—on premises, in the cloud, or at the edge. F5 enables businesses to continuously stay ahead of threats while delivering exceptional, secure digital experiences for their customers. For more information, go to f5.com. (NASDAQ: FFIV)
You can also follow @F5 on X (Twitter) or visit us on LinkedIn and Facebook for more information about F5, its partners, and technologies.
F5, AppWorld, Distributed Cloud Services, BIG-IP, NGINX, and AI Data Fabric are trademarks, service marks, or tradenames of F5, Inc., in the
Source: F5, Inc.
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240207996574/en/
Rob Gruening
F5
(206) 272-6208
r.gruening@f5.com
Holly
WE Communications
(415) 547-7054
hluka@we-worldwide.com
Source: F5, Inc.
FAQ
What new capabilities did F5 announce at AppWorld?
What is the ticker symbol for F5?
What does F5 offer in terms of API security?
How is F5 making AI pervasive across its portfolio?
What is the mission of F5?
What did F5 find in its forthcoming 2024 State of Application Strategy report?
What are the benefits of F5's Distributed Cloud Services in terms of API security?
What is the F5 AI Data Fabric?
What additional resources are available for more information on F5's offerings?
What did F5 announce regarding AI assistants?
